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March 12, 2004/Adar 19 5764, Vol. 56, No. 25
Corporate planner starts new career as tour guide
RAEANNE MARSH
Special to Jewish News
Private tour guide Suzette (Shiraz) Bruhn says her tours take in "Sedona and beyond." The "beyond," she explains, is not just the incredibly beautiful physical terrain that may include the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, and Hopi and Navajo reservations, but is also a spiritual journey.
"It's a blend of Native American spirituality and way of life and the Jewish background that I have," she says. Derived from her own journey - also both physical and spiritual - the business "developed itself."
Bruhn had never heard of Sedona when she arrived on American soil in 1987 from Germany. The business she established in New York City was international convention planning for large corporations such as PepsiCo and Ulysses Corporation. When she first heard of Sedona, she recalls, "It sounded like the other side of the moon." It was so far from the corporate, big city life she knew, she thought, "I'll never get there."
But when friends visiting from Germany wanted to go "someplace different," she suggested Sedona. And felt a connection at first sight. "From the plane, when I looked out and saw the land, I felt an explosion in my heart."
Soon after, Bruhn moved to Arizona and began studying Native American ways of life. And, ironically, it was this study that brought her closer to her Jewish roots. "I had a Native American teacher in Sedona named Holice Littlecreek, and he would always say, 'I'm teaching you the way of the elders but you have to know who you are.'" And who she was, at that point in her life, was decidedly not Jewish.
"I grew up totally anti-religion," she admits. But it was around that time that she also became friendly with a Chabad group in Phoenix and, through them, began studying Chassidus (a form of kabbalah). "It made so much sense," she says, explaining that it blended all the mysticism she'd ever studied - which included Eastern, Western, Indonesian, and Hawaiian. "I realized everything I'd studied has been in kabbalah, and that Judaism is extremely rich and beautiful and more spiritual than anything else I've studied."
"I take what I am and give it back to the community with everything I've learned," Bruhn says. But that doesn't explain how the international corporate convention planner became a tour guide.
"I've always looked for jobs that would excite me and give me fulfillment," she explains. Having moved, finally, to Sedona, she saw women driving jeeps for a tour company. One day, walking past their office she impetuously walked in and said, "Hey, do you need a driver?" Told she looked more like a marketing person than a driver, she admitted that was true but that she had experience driving a tank in the Israeli army. That experience and her enthusiasm got her hired.
Her enthusiasm was equally appreciated by those whom she took on the jeep tours. "They felt my excitement and joy, and enjoyed the Native American stories," she says, explaining that her purpose was to give them an experience and sensation they could take with them.
Now with her own tour business, she customizes private tours for her clients that may include nature walks, seven-canyon tours, champagne sunset tours for couples, picnics on the creek, vortex tours, sightseeing combined with shopping, and camping tours such as the overnight trip to Monument Valley. "We go in on horseback and spend the night in a hogan, which is a six-sided Native American spiritual structure. People find sleeping in a round structure is an unusual experience."
Bruhn also conducts the Medicine Wheel ceremony for groups of four or more. She finds this Native American rite to be an effective bonding experience that is also a fun way to facilitate team building.
Bruhn, who is multilingual in English, Hebrew, French, and German, says of what she does, "This is not a business, but a calling."
Suzette Bruhn can be reached in Sedona at (928) 282-2329 or suzettebruhn@yahoo.com.
Raeanne Marsh is a local free-lance writer.
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